A Very Lucky Girl

If I found out that there was a video camera in the Literacy room of the public library during my tutoring session today I would die. Today was my first official volunteering session with my student. She is a middle-aged woman from Mexico with very little knowledge of the English language. Which is where I come in. She wants to learn conversational English and I am doing my best to aid her learning process. I met her for the first time a week ago and it quickly became apparent that we would have trouble communicating. We sat and smiled at each other and laughed nervously. My Spanish vocabulary is extremely limited, I was proud of myself for saying good morning and her name correctly this morning. All week I stressed about being able to communicate a new language to someone when I couldn't even communicate with in their native language. I hated professors who taught me French when they knew little English.  I had a TEACHER book to page through and the whole time I looked th...

A twelve year old said these ominous words to me yesterday. We were playing a game that involved guessing movie titles based on clues and I was sucking at it. Why? Because they were all "the latest" Disney movies. I think the last Disney movie I saw before Frozen was rewatching Mulan. I'm not up to date on Brave or How to Train Your Dragon or any of the other hot commodities in the elementary school world. And so this twelve year old mocked my knowledge with laughter and a declaration of "you don't know these because they didn't exist back in your day !" Excuse me?  Repetez s'il vous plait? When did I become old enough to have "back in your day"'s thrown at me!?  The same twelve year old went on to talk about how one of his teachers at school is 24 (aka 2 years my senior) and married. And then asked when I was getting married. I told him boys are icky, present company excluded. And then I spent my Saturday night in a hot tub with ...

I danced around my home yesterday morning, torn between laughing hysterically and crying of pure joy.  Why? The direction of my life was so fantastically validated.  When I first started researching the Internet for information regarding teaching English as a second language, I signed up for emails from a job listings site. Just for kicks. I felt sure I would regret the enormous influx of spam, but instead I found something wonderful.  One morning, when I was taking that damn Ancient Art of War in June, I scrolled through the options of the day in my email and found a listing for online volunteers needed for a program in Rio de Janeiro.  Considering I have high hopes and crossed fingers to get into the Fulbright program, destination Brazil, I jumped at the chance to become more involved in this pursuit.  I sent the woman my resume and a short blurb about me and why I was interested.  She responded quickly and set up a Skype chat with me for Thursday,...